Heres the deal - A friend has given me an old NEC Versa 550D laptop to see if it would be possible to install Puppy on it. Here is the starting point - 24MB RAM, Cyrix 5x86 100MHz processor. Installed HD is 500MB with Win95 installed. One 3.5" Floppy Disk drive. NO CD drive or USB connections. Display is a 10.4" LCD with a max resolution of 1024x768x256. Serial Port, Parallel Port, and VGA port available - PS2 Mouse port. Net connection is through a PCMCIA card (IBM Credit Card adapter) that offers a choice of dial up or ethernet connections.
From what I've seen here on the boards, swapping in a hard drive with Puppy loaded on it is probably the easiest way to proceed. I have a 5.1GB laptop HD from my spares box available - my thought is to mount it in a USB enclosure, set up a swap partition and one main partition to be loaded with Puppy. My thought is to set up the swap as a 72 to 96MB size. The real question is which version of Puppy? I'm leaning towards using 2.01 Barebones with the addition of Opera, Abiword, and possibly Gnumeric.
Anyone here care to offer ideas or input on how to set up the hard drive to put in this relic? Other ideas or recomendations? This project is strictly in the "Lets see if this is possible" realm - I've got a functioning desktop and and a somewhat less ancient laptop that both run Puppy very well. If I can get this oldie working my intention is to use it strictly as a web browsing and email machine - for the same reason that people climb mountains - because its there.
Puppy on a REALLY old laptop.
Old NEC portables have been reported to have special problems. Slvrldy has a similar machine to yours. 24Mb main memory is probably insufficient; increasing the swap space will not help. Somehow you need to find a repair shop that can lift the on-board sm memory and replace it with eg a 64Mb chip/chip pack. This requires a special soldering iron tip, lots of patience and experience, but such people do exist. The cost will be disproportionate. Simple answer is to load it with W3.1 or a CLI FDD-based distro and give it to some unsuspecting local lad!
Or try to upgrade it for small $
Hi,
the laptop I am using (Compaq Armada 4210T) has 32 MB RAM installed on the board, and it had 16 MB installed additionally. I looked around for a memory upgrade and learnt that 96MB RAM (32 on board, 64 added) is the max. RAM configuration for this old machine.
So I tried to get a RAM upgrade here in Germany with no success. The few companies that offered the upgrade wanted incredible prices for it (I think something like 85 Euros). So I looked in the USA and found a seller on Ebay who sold them for 25 US$. I ordered this and everything was fine.
In addition I bought a cheap USB 2.0 card and a cheap WLAN card (both Cardbus, I was happy my laptop did not have the old PCMCIA slots...)
So apart from the small harddisk (3 Gigs) and the slow CPU (slow in "") I have a laptop that can do most of the things a "modern" one can do - and with Puppy 2.01 it's FUN!
Given the CPU you mentioned, your laptop must be even older than mine, and the fact it has no PCMCIA slots is even more bad. So if you could get a cheap RAM upgrade and maybe a slightly bigger HDD for small $, it may be worth a try. If not, I agree with Paul and Sage: It's not worth to put a lot of money and work in it, it's better to get something "new" - have a look at the "Bay"...
Regards, Deumex
the laptop I am using (Compaq Armada 4210T) has 32 MB RAM installed on the board, and it had 16 MB installed additionally. I looked around for a memory upgrade and learnt that 96MB RAM (32 on board, 64 added) is the max. RAM configuration for this old machine.
So I tried to get a RAM upgrade here in Germany with no success. The few companies that offered the upgrade wanted incredible prices for it (I think something like 85 Euros). So I looked in the USA and found a seller on Ebay who sold them for 25 US$. I ordered this and everything was fine.
In addition I bought a cheap USB 2.0 card and a cheap WLAN card (both Cardbus, I was happy my laptop did not have the old PCMCIA slots...)
So apart from the small harddisk (3 Gigs) and the slow CPU (slow in "") I have a laptop that can do most of the things a "modern" one can do - and with Puppy 2.01 it's FUN!
Given the CPU you mentioned, your laptop must be even older than mine, and the fact it has no PCMCIA slots is even more bad. So if you could get a cheap RAM upgrade and maybe a slightly bigger HDD for small $, it may be worth a try. If not, I agree with Paul and Sage: It's not worth to put a lot of money and work in it, it's better to get something "new" - have a look at the "Bay"...
Regards, Deumex
Here is a site that shows the really old computer I have:
http://www.zenithdatasystems.de/zfl181en.htm
I bought it new in about 1986, cost a lot of money but it paid for itself in my business. Has a 2400 baud modem too, that was hot stuff.
I still have all the manuals. I even still use it, down in my ammo loading room. Apparently it is somewhat collectable by now.
Say, I noticed you said you got a PCMCIA USB 2.0 card and a wlan card. I am in that same situation with the older Thinkpad I'm using Puppy on, but both my cards have big lumps on the end so they can't both be used at the same time in my two slots. And I've not seen such cards available for sale without the lumps. How did you deal with that issue?
http://www.zenithdatasystems.de/zfl181en.htm
I bought it new in about 1986, cost a lot of money but it paid for itself in my business. Has a 2400 baud modem too, that was hot stuff.
I still have all the manuals. I even still use it, down in my ammo loading room. Apparently it is somewhat collectable by now.Say, I noticed you said you got a PCMCIA USB 2.0 card and a wlan card. I am in that same situation with the older Thinkpad I'm using Puppy on, but both my cards have big lumps on the end so they can't both be used at the same time in my two slots. And I've not seen such cards available for sale without the lumps. How did you deal with that issue?
USB + WLAN same time
(We get slightly offtopic here, but however:)
Paul,
when I bought the two cards, I realized that I would have a "space problem" like you mentioned.
For the USB card, you do not have a choice, because the ports are causing it to have this lump. My approach to the problem was to buy a "flat" WLAN card, and this was the only premise I had when buying it (and it should not be expensive, of course). At this time I did not think of Linux and installation problems, so I did not pay attention about the chipset.
So I went to the german Ebay and had a look.
I found a USB card looking like this:
and a WLAN card looking almost like this:
(Completely flat, no lump at all. The brand of the WLAN card is "Fiberline", and it has a Marvell chipset. Is offered for <10 Euro here). I'm pretty shure you can find it on the US Ebay (assuming you are living in the USA), but should not be too hard to find elsewere. If you can't find one, send me a PM and we'll get this solved somehow.
BTW: Ammo loading room? Are you a destroyer commander?
Regards, Deumex
Paul,
when I bought the two cards, I realized that I would have a "space problem" like you mentioned.
For the USB card, you do not have a choice, because the ports are causing it to have this lump. My approach to the problem was to buy a "flat" WLAN card, and this was the only premise I had when buying it (and it should not be expensive, of course). At this time I did not think of Linux and installation problems, so I did not pay attention about the chipset.
So I went to the german Ebay and had a look.
I found a USB card looking like this:
and a WLAN card looking almost like this:
(Completely flat, no lump at all. The brand of the WLAN card is "Fiberline", and it has a Marvell chipset. Is offered for <10 Euro here). I'm pretty shure you can find it on the US Ebay (assuming you are living in the USA), but should not be too hard to find elsewere. If you can't find one, send me a PM and we'll get this solved somehow.
BTW: Ammo loading room? Are you a destroyer commander?
Regards, Deumex
Here is another solution I'm looking at:
http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=9485
...that is, getting my wireless out on the USB, and not using a PCMCIA card at all.
But I do like your solution too, and I'll keep it in mind. Not sure that one is really any better or worse than the other...
http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=9485
...that is, getting my wireless out on the USB, and not using a PCMCIA card at all.
But I do like your solution too, and I'll keep it in mind. Not sure that one is really any better or worse than the other...
I don't know what that is. No, I just mean this. I keep records of the different loads on it.BTW: Ammo loading room? Are you a destroyer commander? Wink